PLANNING MALAYSIA: Journal of the Malaysian Institute of Planners VOLUME 15 ISSUE 4 (2017), Page 1 - 12 ARE GREEN UNIVERSITIES PRODUCING GREENER FUTURE LEADERS? Raihana Mohd Ghaus1, Rosta Harun2, Lim Kuang Hock3, & Zakiah Ponrahono4 1,3,4Faculty of Environmental Studies UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA 2Institute for Medical Research NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH MALAYSIA Abstract In recent years, studies on campus sustainability have been conducted to measure the impact that universities have on the environment and several mechanisms to measure and rank universities globally on how they perform in sustainability have been proposed. The UI Greenmetrics ranks universities based on sustainable performance ratings and focused more on the initiatives and opportunities provided to achieve sustainability but did not address the issue of environmental literacy among the university students. This study aims to understand how sustainable practices and policies adopted by Green Universities as well as demographic factors relate to the level of environmental attitude and responsible environmental behaviour of Malaysian student leaders. A census survey was carried out on student leaders of Malaysian public universities to assess their level of perception, attitude, personal responsible environmental behaviour (REB) and REB with regards to UI Greenmetrics Criteria. The Mann-Whitney U test conducted revealed that there was no significant difference in the level of the assessed components across all demographic factors between green and non- green universities. Spearman rank order correlation showed that there was a significant positive correlation between perception and personal REB (rs(322) = .385, p ≤ .05) as well student council REB (rs(322) = .542, p ≤ .05). Attitude was found to have a significant negative correlation with student council REB (rs(322) = -.114, p ≤ .05) while a high level of personal REB was significantly correlated with student council behaviour (rs(322) = .579, p ≤ .05). Keyword: Green University; UI Greenmetrics; environmental attitude; environmental behaviour; student leaders Date Received: 11th May 2017 Date of Acceptance: 6th November 2017 2 Professor at Universiti Putra Malaysia, Email: [email protected] 1 Raihana Mohd Ghaus, Rosta Harun, Lim Kuang Hock, & Zakiah Ponrahono Are Green Universities Producing Greener Future Leaders? INTRODUCTION UI Greenmetrics as a measure of campus sustainability Universities in Malaysia have been working towards implementing Green Initiatives as outlined in the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Greening Universities Toolkit in 2013 to become sustainable Green Campuses. Universities are thought of as mini cities in the way they function and causes direct and indirect impact on the environment (Mat et al., 2011). In recent years, studies on campus sustainability have been conducted to measure the impact that universities have on the environment and several mechanisms to measure and rank universities globally on how they perform in sustainability have been proposed. In 2010, the University of Indonesia proposed for a global ranking list of universities’ sustainable performance ratings. The UI Greenmetrics is designed as a practical, entry-level tool for assessing campus sustainability efforts in both developed and developing countries and thought to be a simpler approach than other ranking systems such as GREENSHIP, STARS and the College Sustainability Report Card (Lauder et al., 2015). Results of the 2015 ranking saw 8 Malaysian tertiary institution listed as green campuses from a total of 407 universities that took part in the ranking worldwide. For Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia came in first and ranked at number 17, followed by Universiti Utara Malaysia, 44, Universiti Malaya, 65, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, 106, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 110, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 118, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, 173 and International Islamic University of Malaysia came in at number 361 (Universitas Indonesia, 2015). Participation in the ranking by universities is voluntary and some universities may prefer to opt out of the ranking Universities that participate in the ranking may benefit by further fortifying their commitment to achieve campus sustainability while gaining a mark of assurance of their greenness through this recognition. Husin & Kunjuraman (2015) believe that campus sustainability has an important role to ensure the quality of educational services provided by local universities in order to compete with higher institutions abroad. A study conducted in Thailand comparing green and non-green universities in terms of perceived quality of life suggested that universities should adopt the criteria set in the UI Greenmetric World University Ranking to achieve better sustainability in their campuses and improve the quality of life of their stakeholders (Tiyarattanachai & Hollmann, 2015). The UI Greenmetric measures the sustainability of tertiary education institutions by quantifying their performance across six categories, namely, setting and infrastructure, energy and climate change, waste, water, transportation and education. The UI Greenmetrics initially started off to assess the infrastructures and green initiatives carried out by universities to achieve green campus status and it was not until 2014 that education was included as one of the © 2017 by MIP 2 PLANNING MALAYSIA Journal of the Malaysia Institute of Planners (2017) indicators (Universitas Indonesia, 2015). In the education category, indicators include the number of courses related to environment and sustainability offered as well as the availability of funds to carry out research. The study focused more on the initiatives and opportunities provided to achieve sustainability but did not address the issue of environmental literacy with components such as environmental attitude and activism among the university students. At status quo, the metrics still lacks the measure of environmental literacy in its indicators. Therefore, a comprehensive study on the level of environmental literacy should be conducted to determine whether the level of environmental attitude and responsible environmental behaviour (REB) among the students reflects the ranking of the green universities. The importance of measuring environmental literacy There is a need to assess the environmental literacy of the university students in order to predict the future of decision-making on issues concerning natural resource use and environment as environmental literacy holds enormous potential for radically changing the way environmental issues are conceived (Clair, 2003). The UI Greenmetrics does not take into account environmental literacy in its assessment. For environmental protection to take place, it is not sufficient to assume that providing avenue for discourse on environmental knowledge will automatically result in the university producing more green citizens. As observed by Burchett (2015), although today’s generation is more knowledgeable about environmental issues and sustainability, the knowledge is not translated into a deep concern for ecological issues or major alterations of human behaviour. Therefore, in addition to creating environmentally informed students, universities must also be able to instil the willingness to act for the environment for graduates to truly become green. This study attempts to address the issue of lack of indicator on environmental literacy of university students in the UI Greenmetrics. A study on the environmental literacy of student leaders in Malaysian higher public institutions will provide a preliminary perspective on whether the policies and strategies implemented to make greener campuses has affected the students’ outlook towards the environment. As student leaders graduated and become functioning members of the society, a look at the level of environmental literacy among the student representatives might give a glimpse of how environmental issues will be dealt with in the future. Assessing the environmental literacy of student representatives will serve as an indicator of the status of environmental literacy among university students. The representatives are elected through council elections and candidates worthy of support by the student community are chosen based on their advocacy of issues and their ability to speak for the regular masses. Students who are deemed worthy of such position are expected to exhibit a mature level of environmental literacy which should translate into activism. The © 2017 by MIP 3 Raihana Mohd Ghaus, Rosta Harun, Lim Kuang Hock, & Zakiah Ponrahono Are Green Universities Producing Greener Future Leaders? result from the assessment of their environmental attitude and behaviour will provide an insight on how responsive the student representatives are to address environmental issues on campus. Measures of environmental literacy of student leaders between green and non-green universities The research aims to understand how the sustainable practices and policies adopted by Green Universities relates to the level of environmental literacy of Malaysian student leaders. For the purpose of this study, the term “green university” refers to Malaysian public universities listed in the 2015 UI Greenmetrics ranking while “non-green university” are those that have not participated in the ranking. There are three specific objectives of the research. The first is to assess the environmental literacy of student leaders in Malaysian universities in relation to UI Greenmetric